COAL AND CRICKET

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 110, 5 November 1926, Page 7

COAL AND CRICKET

INDUSTRIAL SITUATION

BRITAIN'S REAL PROBLEM

SOME THOUGHTFUL CONTRIBUTIONS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 22nd September. The "star" feature of "Tho Review of Reviews" (September-October issue) is an article by Mr. Wickham Steed, called "Coal and Cricket—A Hint from New Zealand." He cleverly works up hii matter so as to tell his readers about the New Zealand "Companies Empowering Act, 1924." From the recent booklet written by Mr. H. Valder and the Rev. F. Harty, he makes copious oxtracts, his article running over nine pages. Mi. Steed has been studying from outside it some of the problems that tho Mother Country has to face. "While looking at Great Britain from the Continent in August, he saw two things—one clearly and brightly, the ..other dimly and dully. The one was the final Test match; the other was the coal stoppage, The English papers received left no room for doubt as to the relative importance of the two, the Test match overshadowing everything else. "There is much talk," says Mr. Wickham Steed, "of a Franco-German steel and iron combine which the metallurgists of Belgium and Luxemburg might join. Such a combine would hold a practical monopoly of the European markets, and could compete effectively with British and American industry abroad. Some two years ago, leading representatives of tho British steel and iron industry were approached by important German firms with proposals for an Anglo-Gorman combine. The proposals led to nothing, partly because British industrialists did not wish to be linked with an undertaking that might be directed against France, and partly on account of the total unfitness of the British industry to make ierms with .the highly-organised steel and iron industry of Germany. The state of the British steel and iron industry resembles that of a decaying feudal system—so and so many great lords and a number of petty barons fortified in their own castles, and unwilling or unable to co-operate heartily for a common or a national object. These casties will have to surrender, or to be overthrown, before the industry can play its proper part in an organised industrial world. Some of them are already crumbling while their owners vainly invoke the principles of the 'Manchester School' as the one and only means of salvation. Yet the fortunes of iron and steal are indissoluble linked with the fortunes of coal; and these, in turn, depend upon the possibility of finding some relationship between capital and labour that shall not be at the mercy of the Evan Williamses and the Adam Nimmos, on the one hand, or of the A. J. Cooks and Herbert Smiths, on the other. "Is such a relationship conceivable? I think it is, though it will imply farreaching changes of mind all round. I say 'changes of mind' advisedly, because- the problem is psychological in the first place and economic in the second or, rather, the economics of it depend so largely upon the psychology of it that it cannot be approached solely from the economic angle.'. . The point is well developed in a pamphlet just published by two New Zcalanders, Messrs. Frank Harty and Harry Valder, to which Sir Lynden Macassey has written a brief preface. . . Thus he is no mere theorist, but a 'practical' man •whoso views arc entitled to the consideration of practical men. 1 VALUE OF HUMAN TOUCH. •'•ln the- world of Labour, on the contrary, the tendency has been all the other way. It has been to damn the capitalist system in any form as the root of all evil, and to work for itg replacement by 'the community,' or the State, preferably a Socialist State. To the drawbacks of the bureaucratisation, or the extension of officialdom, which this change would imply, SocialJits and Labour leaders have been pcr■isteritly blind. Proudhon's saying, 'Property is theft'; and Marx's theory that capital is the result of the undue appropriation by capitalists of the 'surplus value' over and above the cost of raw material wnich, in his view, labour alone creates and labour therefore ought to receive, have coloured ttie whole outlook "of 'the workers' upon economic and social problems, ''To abandon this outlook for one which accepts the capitalist system in principle as justified and beneficent, which regards private property as jwholesome, which discards tho Marxist notion of a 'dictatorship of the havenots' and aims deliberately at the multiplication of 'haves,' pre-supposes a revolutionary change in the mental attitude of millions of men and women. jset there can bo no true health in inidustry until the change has been wrought. If our Labour loaders were wise they would work for it; just as if the miners' leaders had been intelligent, they would have seized the Coal Eeport with both hands and have used it as a lever to compel tho Government to reorganiso the coal industry in a lenao favourable to the admission of labour to some share in the control of it. But experience has proved that it is usually futile to count upon the antecedent' wisdom of Labour leaders, or of tjieir followers. They are too much afraid of being regarded as traitors to their 'class,' and as lukewarm in the waging of 'class warfare.' Hence the aeed for leadership from 'the top.' " TBIBUTES TO PAMPHLET. Bishop Gore, whose review of the New Zealand treatise attracted wide attention when it appeared in the "Manchester Guardian," makes further reference to the subject in a letter to "The Times." The Bishop says: "This scheme seems to some as interesting, original and practicable. It is much to be desired that men of business who are not blind to the need of fundamental reforms should study it. It has not tho weaknesses of the ordinary profit-sharing projects and appears to be capable of solving what is perhaps the deepest economic .problem of to-day—how to make the 'workers' feel that it is worth their while to do their best, because they are fully partners as well as workers. I will not repeat a description of the project, but perhaps you will allow me to'mention that the promoters' pamph-, let entitled 'Wanted,' is procurable from Messrs. Mowbray, Margaret street, W. 1." "The Spectator" has this to say of the pamphlet: "Everyone anxious to see the gradual reorganisation of British industry on sound lines should buy a copy of a remarkable booklet, entitled 'Wanted, a Practical Solution to Britain's Industrial Problems.' It is a contribution from New Zealand by Messrs. Frank Harty and Harry Valder."